As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've always struggled with the sense that I am completely uncommon - with no fellow human to understand me as a person, to relate to my thoughts and feelings. For as long as I can remember I have always felt like I was on the fringe, like there was no place for me to fit in. Whether or not this helped to bring upon my depression, or whether I had had depression since I was little is a mystery to me. In any case, by the age of 13, I knew that something was wrong. The night I crept into the kitchen to seek out my mom's old, dull, serrated steak knives I was beside myself with hurt and confusion. As I began sawing away at my finger with the most painful tool I could find, all I could think about was how the pain from the knife was blotting out the pain in my heart. That night a Cutter was born.
From then on I turned to hurting myself when confronted with particularly difficult feelings. My self-doubt and worry, my fears and insecurities were crushing my young spirit. My family was falling apart, and I felt I had nowhere to turn. Back then, there really wasn't much information out there for kids going through what I was. If there was, I never saw it. There was no crisis line to call. I was utterly lost.
There were few things that kept me feeling the desire to go on. One of those things was music, one was immersing myself in books, and the last was writing. And so, when I wasn't in school, I was behind the closed door of my bedroom listening to music and either reading or writing. From the very start, I found that music would help to ease my soul, and writing would help me to purge some of the intense feelings that made it seem as if I would implode with hurt.
In future posts I will continue with my story. Not because I want anybody to say, "oh, poor baby. Poor thing. I'm so sad for you." I need to confront these things in print, and I want to let others who may be suffering similarly know that they are not alone - because I always felt I was. Today, my illness is well controlled with medication, and some of my "therapy" still includes music, reading, and writing. All things happen for a reason, and my life being touched with a deep love of music and the written word has blessed me and saved me time and again.
When I decided to begin blogging, I had no idea that I would discuss this aspect of my life. A family member recently started blogging about an extremely difficult personal struggle, and it occurred to me that perhaps it was time for me to try doing that as well, to share my story in the hopes that my words will reach someone out there who needs to read them. In retrospect, it's perfectly logical that I would share these thoughts with you, as part of the reason for this blog was to share my poetry, and much of my poetry is dark and emotional, stemming from my struggle with that immense asshole, Depression. I leave you with one of my more wrenching pieces, along with a song that really resonates with me:
Fade away...
Did you ever want to fade away?
Melt into the ground like summer rain?
Or shrink
Smaller and smaller - flesh and bone dissolving
Until there is no more of you?
I have wished for cancer
To eat at this body
To make this overabundant mass of me
Become small enough to be loved.
I have prayed for illness to deliver me
From me.
Now, in this vessel of mine,
There lurks a tumor -
A mysterious mass of "precancer" hope.
I wait and I wonder.
I pray for an outcome.
Perhaps not one you may think.
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